by Wendy Rosnau
“Hospital? He and I have business going on and he’s in the hospital? What happened?”
“He got a bitch headache on the flight back that knocked him on his ass. When he got here he still looked wrung out. He called his doctor and the doc told him he was out of time. That he needed the operation pronto. I know about your business with Holic. You’re back hunting him. That’s why Merrick came to see me. I guess I’m watching your back from here if you’ll have me. You know I’ll do whatever I can to help you.”
Bjorn smiled as he continued to follow the route Nadja was taking as she bypassed Kufstein on E-60. “You know I’m all right with it.”
“So what is it you need? This call must mean you need something.”
“A cross-check on Lev Polax. I want to know who he’s worked with in the past, and who, besides us, he’s working with now.”
“Is there a problem?
“Last night a sniper was waiting at the airport.”
“I’ll get on it. You all right?”
“Ja.”
“How about your partner, the blonde?”
Bjorn winced. He should have known Merrick would mention she was blond. “She’s fine.”
“Just fine? I did a little checking on her for you. Wanted to make sure she could back you up in a tight spot.”
“And are you satisfied?”
“She’s got dead aim, but then if she’s—”
“Ja, ja. How can she miss at such close range,” Bjorn finished.
“Something else wrong? You sound on edge.”
“I’ll acclimatize.”
“To the blonde or the weather?”
“Both.”
“Okay, so I’ll see what I can find out about Polax.”
“Outside of Merrick, he’s the only one who knew we were flying into Vienna.”
“I’ll check it out.”
“How’s the leg?”
“It hasn’t rotted off yet.”
“That’s a good sign. I’m glad you agreed to watch my back, Jacy. Call me when you get something.”
“It’s a date.”
Chapter 7
Nadja waited until dark before she entered the church. She had watched people come and go for two hours at Wilten hoping to recognize one of them as Ruger. He hadn’t shown yet, but maybe he was already inside.
The church was cool and the amber sconces on the walls set the tone. It was a beautiful church, stained glass scenes and candles lit.
She slipped into a pew at the back of the church waiting for her eyes to adjust to the lighting. There was a rectory behind the church, living quarters for the priests. Ruger could have entered the church from a side door and she’d missed him.
She was anxious to see him, hadn’t in four years. This was the way it had to be. They had known that, after the agreement they’d made. Still, she missed him. The letters weren’t enough. They said nothing, only let her know that all was well without saying it. But now the routine had been upset, and Nadja wanted to know why.
Because of the situation, she would speak to her brother here in the church. She would visit him like a repenting soul would, and that way nothing would draw attention to her.
She watched a woman leave the draped confessional and another woman go in. Minutes later a man traded places with the woman. Then a young boy.
She couldn’t remember when she last had gone to confession. She must have been fourteen or fifteen. No, she was twelve. It was the day after she’d slipped out of the house to follow Mady to meet her boyfriend.
When the boy left, so did the priest, and another cloaked figure took his place, but it wasn’t Ruger. This priest had a cane and walked bent over.
She waited another forty minutes as more people visited the confessional and the priest with the cane. And then he, too, left, replaced by a priest who walked up a side aisle as if he’d come from the back door. Nadja only caught a glimpse of him before he was inside the wooden confessional. But this priest was taller, walked upright, and there was something about his walk, something familiar.
A rush of relief had Nadja on her feet. It was Ruger. He was here.
She kept her pace natural and unhurried as she left the pew and headed up the side aisle. There was no one waiting, and she slipped behind the curtain, anxious to take a seat on the bench. It was dark inside, save for a single candle that glowed in a sconce on the wall.
“Father?” When there was no answer, she said again, “Father, are you there?”
“I’m here.”
The voice that came through the slotted window was all wrong. Ruger had no accent—especially not a…Danish lilt.
Nadja started back up off the bench, but before she could get to her feet, the lilt froze her where she sat.
“Sit down, Nadja.” Then the window slid to one side to reveal Bjorn Odell in a priest’s cloak.
“You asshole.”
“Shame on you. Swearing in church.”
She started to stand again, but she didn’t get halfway up before he raised a short-barreled gun and aimed it at her.
“Shame on you,” she mimicked. “Waving a gun around in God’s house.
“We’re a pair, ja. Two peas… You have a dirty mouth and I have violence on my mind.”
“Go away for an hour,” she said suddenly. “Give me—”
“No.”
“This is the personal business I mentioned. One hour and—”
“No.”
“I need to talk to—”
“Me, right now,” he cut in, “or that violence I mentioned could get out of hand.”
“Later.”
“Now, or…”
“Or what?”
“I’ll make a scene. A bloody scene.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“You don’t know me that well to gamble, do you?”
She didn’t, and so she relaxed on the hard bench. She forced herself to look straight at him. “You were suppose to meet me in Salzburg.”
“That was your plan, not mine. But then, I would have been waiting there a long time. You never did intend to meet me there, did you?”
“Eventually, yes. After I finished here. Where is it?”
“Where is what?”
“I’m obviously wearing a tracking device. That’s how you followed me. Where is the bug?”
He ignored the question and asked his own. “Who are you meeting here?”
She would have to tell him something. A portion of the truth would be best, but…
“A lie wouldn’t be a good idea right now. Anything less than the truth and this partnership is over. So be…careful.”
“You don’t understand.”
“No, I don’t, but I’m going to. I don’t like surprises. So out with it. Why are you here?”
“I told you, personal business.”
“That tells me nothing.”
Nadja hesitated too long, and he swore sharply.
“I’m shipping you back.”
“No! You can’t do that.”
“I can and intend to.”
“Okay, I’ll tell you the truth.”
“Again I caution you to think before you speak. We’re already two days off the pace. Are you aware of what’s in those kill-files? If they get in the wrong hands—”
“I know what’s at stake. I know where Holic is. We can be there tomorrow if everything works out here tonight. So go away for an hour.”
Nadja knew the importance of the kill-file and the impact it could make on the intelligence world once the killing started. Once this was taken care of with Ruger she would be able to concentrate on the mission, and they would be successful. She had what they needed to put them well ahead of the other agents. All she needed was an hour with Ruger.
“This is bullshit. I’ve lost another day chasing your ass instead of Holic’s. If I don’t start getting the right answers soon, Nadja, I’m going to tie and gag you and send you back to Polax in a box.”
He looked mad enough to do
it. Mad enough to accept no less than the truth. Maybe there was a way to appease him. To offer some portion of the truth.
“I have a brother,” she began. “He’s a priest here. We’ve always kept in touch. We write to each other four times a year. But his routine changed several months ago, and I need to know why. I need to know if he’s all right.”
“So that’s it? You’re worried about a brother who’s a little late answering one of your letters?”
He was such an asshole. “He’s not just a little late.”
“This is bullshit. You’re stalling. You don’t know where Reznik is, do you.”
“Yes, I do. I’ll take you there tomorrow. I was the right choice for this mission, Bjorn. I didn’t lie.”
“Let’s go.”
“No. Not yet. As long as we’re here I want to see if Ruger’s still in residence. He’s got to be here.”
“Didn’t you check the rectory when you got here?”
“No. I didn’t want anyone to—I wanted to see him here.”
He gave her a skeptical look. “Need to confess something? Worried about making it through the golden arches?”
“You mean the pearly gates,” she corrected. “And no, I’m not.”
Quest’s bedroom assassin in a confessional? Yes, she supposed it looked ridiculous. A mockery is what it was: her seated on this side and Bjorn on the other side outfitted in a priest’s robe. The devil’s brigade.
The truth was her soul had been lost a long time ago. She’d sold it to Kovar for a second chance at life.
“Get up. We’re leaving.”
His voice was gruff, and she stood slowly. When she stepped out of the confessional, he was there to take hold of her arm. He loomed over her, his surly mood evident by the jut of his unshaven jaw.
She wondered if he’d woken up with a headache, or if his stitches were too tight. Any normal man wouldn’t have been able to stand after the Sebor and the pills, and would be more than a little stiff-necked after the way that bullet had torn up his flesh.
But this was Bjorn Odell, she reminded herself. He wasn’t average, in any respect.
Not in or out of the shower.
“I wasn’t lying,” Nadja said as they left the rectory after speaking to a parishioner named Father Osip. “He couldn’t look me in the eye. He knows where my brother is. He wasn’t telling us the truth. He knows more, and if you would have let me—
“Let you what? Pull your .45 and threaten his life?”
He had let her go to the rectory and inquire about her brother. Why, he didn’t know. They had wasted another hour, but they weren’t going to waste any more. He’d appeased her and now it was over. They were going to get back on track. They had an assassin to hunt and a kill-file to recover.
“I wasn’t going to shoot him, just scare him a little,” she admitted.
“He wasn’t going to tell us more even if you had shoved the barrel of your gun up his nose.”
She ran after him, sped past him and turned, forcing him to pull up and stop. “You don’t know that.”
Bjorn jammed his hands on his hips beneath his pea coat. “Listen, I don’t know why your brother isn’t here, and I don’t care. It’s time to forget about this personal stuff and concentrate on the mission. Frankly, that’s all I care about, that kill-file and pumping a bullet into Reznik’s evil hide.”
“The priest was lying. If you’re any good at profile work, you saw that, right? The way he couldn’t look at us when he said he didn’t have Ruger’s forwarding address.”
Bjorn sidestepped her and started toward the SUV. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It doesn’t matter? Of course it matters.” She was close on his heels. “Ruger wouldn’t have willingly left the church without a good reason. I’m worried that something has happened to him. Something terrible.”
Bjorn turned back and she slammed into his chest. He reached out, grabbed her and saved her from being knocked on her butt.
She shook off his hand. “What do you want? Do you want to hear me beg?”
“It might be amusing to watch, but it won’t help.”
“Ruger would have written to me and told me he was moving if that was his plan.”
“Maybe he was in a hurry.”
“It’s been over eight months.”
Bjorn started toward the rented vehicle again. It had stopped snowing and there was no reason why they couldn’t drive all night. He was wide awake, thanks to a gallon of coffee, and they were headed in the right direction. Otz wasn’t more than three hours away.
He opened the door, looked across the hood. “Like I said, the mission is our first priority. After that’s finished—”
“I can’t work distracted like this.”
He had climbed into the driver’s seat. Now he buzzed down the passenger window. “Get undistracted, Nadja. If you can’t manage that, then be prepared to be sent back to Prague.”
“Asshole!”
“Okay, I’m an asshole. The truth is I don’t care what you think of me. I only care about one thing right now—getting this mission started, and finished. Once we accomplish that, you can call Polax and ask him for a few weeks off to run down your brother. Who, by the way, obviously doesn’t want to be found or he would have left you a forwarding address. Now, get in!”
“You have no heart. You’re…”
“Really pissing me off,” Bjorn warned. “You don’t want to do that. Now get that cotton-candy ass of yours in the car.”
She just stood there.
“Which is the fastest route to Otz?” Bjorn asked, hoping she would see how futile it was to challenge him. This game of hers was over and he’d won.
“Which way to Otz? Hmm…” She shrugged, sucked on her lower lip. “You know, I’m just not sure anymore. Like I said, when I’m distracted I can’t think straight.”
“Bitch.”
“Asshole.”
Bjorn swore and glared at her through the open window. Not even his Onyxx teammates would have dared push him when he’d clearly warned them off and given them the gutted glare. But here she was standing up to him.
“Since we’re here I don’t see why you can’t help me break into Father Opis’s office and see what he’s hiding. Who knows, maybe a few answers to my questions will clear my head. It’s just a thought.”
Was she crazy? He had told her he was through with this bullshit and here she was trying to bargain.
“Look—”
“No, you look, Odell. Either we play this my way, or you send me back and spend the next two weeks checking out a dozen false leads. And while you’re wasting time, the kill-files will probably fall into the hands of some rebel fascist group.”
He could strangle her with his bare hands. His eyes must have relayed his thoughts because she angled her head to expose more of her neck.
“Go ahead.”
Bjorn muttered under his breath, glanced at the church. There were three entrances, and two into the rectory. The locks were lame and the security lights poor. It would take less than five minutes to break in.
He buzzed up the passenger window and got back out of the car. “All right. Thirty minutes. That’s all I’ll give you once we get inside. And if you don’t find anything—”
“I’ll find something.”
“Either way, before we go back inside, I want to hear you promise that whatever we learn in there is going to be put on hold while we refocus on the mission. Say it. Promise me we’re back on the hunt for Holic in thirty minutes.”
“I promise.”
She was a poor liar, Bjorn thought. For a woman who was so damn good at so many things—lap dancing included—her voice lacked conviction when she lied.
So why was he still going to help her break into Father Opis’s office?
Bjorn had insisted on going in first. Nadja had let him, imitating his quiet steps as they entered the church through a side door that had a burned-out security light.
They moved swiftly but q
uietly, and within minutes they were in the hall moving toward Father Opis’s private office. The hall was pitch-black, and Bjorn suddenly produced a small flashlight from inside his coat.
They located the office and slipped inside. The bank of files stood along one wall, and together they quickly began sifting through them. But after riffling through two nine-drawer file cabinets, they had come up empty.
Bjorn whispered, “There’s nothing here. If he worked here, they don’t want anyone to know it.”
The comment stunned Nadja. “He did work here. They can’t cover that up.”
“They can and have. Maybe he was renounced for during something wrong.”
“Ruger didn’t…wouldn’t do anything wrong. He doesn’t have an immoral bone in his body.”
“They say that kind of behavior runs in the family. Maybe a little bit of you rubbed off on him.”
“You’re saying I have immoral bones?” She tried to push past him, but he deftly put her into the corner and leaned in.
“Easy, Q, your fangs are going to get in the way.”
“In the way for what?”
He stared at her lips, and it was obvious what he was thinking.
“Let me go.”
When he didn’t, she attempted to raise her knee, but he outmaneuvered her, dodged her firing range. Then he grabbed her arm and spun her around. She ended up facing the wall with Bjorn snug against her ass.
“I did what I said I would do. I gave you thirty minutes,” he whispered in her ear. “Now you’re going to do what you promised. We go back to work.”
“It’s obvious you don’t have any family or you’d understand my worry. I’ve sent Ruger letters for the past five years. He’s been a priest here at Wilten Parish longer than that. He couldn’t have done anything wrong to be asked to leave. And if he had, he would have written and told me.”
A door slammed out in the corridor. Bjorn swore, then he released Nadja and doused the flashlight. Together they hurried through an open archway looking for a place to hide.
In a corner stood a private confessional lit by a lone candle. Bjorn shoved Nadja into the space, then unhooked the drapes and let them fall. He spun around as Nadja blew out the candle.
She felt him next to her, and they came together quickly. He wrapped his arm around her and face-to-face, body to body, they both listened as the office door opened. There was a glow along the edge of the drape confirming that someone had entered the outer room and had turned on the desk lamp.